The Rally Point: Spice Wars, Empire and the Problem with a Dune Strategy Game

“Dune is not filmable! It would never work as a film,” I shout, defiantly putting my fists on my hips. “But what,” says Denis Villeneuve, “is it with two?” and smashes my body into a trillion pieces. I have a difficult life.

But wait! How about a strategy game? Denis looks nervously at the inexplicable open pools of molten steel around us. Now I’ve got him. He hasn’t even played Spice Wars. Except… I think Spice Wars is as good as an adaptation can get. So is Imperium. Damn. All right, Denis, let’s call a truce and get this sorted.

Of course, there were games before Dune. 1992’s Dune was perhaps the most ambitious, integrating adventure gameplay and impressive 3D travel sections into an experimental, story-driven strategy game, all in real time. The main argument against it is Dune II, which so defined the genre that its own sequels added little. Dune Colon Spice Wars largely aims to do just that, sending the book’s combat-ready factions to the surface of Arrakis to openly fight for the spice. Even the Emperor lands his armies on the planet to attack the Great Houses, which is ridiculous but makes sense if you accept the premise. Of course, Big Daddy Corrino is going to try and wipe everyone out.

It’s really just an excuse to have another faction doing its own thing. Rather than a pure RTS game, Spice Wars reimagines Dune II through a filter of modern grand strategy and 4Xeses, relying not only on asymmetry in units but also in methods. Aside from fighting, everyone has a different approach to the Landsraad, the galactic council. This meets regularly to propose three random resolutions that the four active factions can vote on, either to gain an advantage or to take on their opponents. Each faction has a number of innate, renewable votes and influence points for one-time use, and some have unique ways to take on bills. This is where things can get dramatic, and the guessing game over who will vote for what is a fun system with enough twists to make it worth thinking about each time, but without being overwhelming or too gimmicky.

The heart of it all, though, is the battlefield, whose slow pace avoids the usual RTS combat, and small armies and a supply system that punishes invasions lend a side of intrigue. The expansion is a careful, complex consideration for everyone, especially the Ecaz, who live or die by controlling the map. As is the Vernius of the recent DLC, who must spread in sinister tentacles, make difficult decisions about what to abandon, and are made entirely of borders. They are the research faction, but rather than using the power of large numbers to scoot or consume everything, they can channel it into the influence of the Landsraad, or even be rewarded for it not research. They are also purple, so they are automatically correct.

Conquest can be satisfying (I love that you can conquer enemy territory by “liberating” and neutralizing it rather than conquering it), and it’s also satisfying to politically outdo the caressing Atreidorks as the underdog among the smugglers. But ironically, for a game that inverts the desaturated feel of Villeneuve’s desert and recolors the famous cinnamon a rich purple, Spice Wars somehow lacks innate drama.

While voting and invasions can be intense in the late game, it’s rarely clear why exactly an opponent is doing it. And no one has much say in the matter. Even an incoming sandworm heralding a horde of angry Fremen is oddly undramatic, just a tactical consideration as you keep an eye on their village and consider pillaging it. Oddly enough, this is something Spice Wars has in common with the other grand strategy game adaptation, Imperium.

I tried Imperium almost out of spite after sharing a screenshot of its impenetrable-looking game board. After a single game, even without a tutorial, I knew roughly what I was doing. It involves stacking colored dice on spaces on the game board to swap them for other dice, which makes the thing go up, and why did that happen?

Except that Imperium’s interface makes it understandable if you don’t worry too much about understanding everything right away. This is an incredible implementation of the “we’re playing a friendly game and you’re learning it as you go” dynamic on PC, with the added computational benefit of highlighting what’s possible, saving you from a million dead-end questions. It’s always clear what you can’t do, and consistent enough that while you might not understand why, you know it’s Is for one simple reason, and you don’t have to memorize 300 rules to learn it. In fact, I would have been overwhelmed by an in-depth tutorial with terms and concepts that I would understand better over time. It also helps that the modest sound effects are just fun. I don’t think you ever outgrow “press button, makes funny noises.”

Most rounds are a straight “pay 2 of this to get 1 of that” or “grant 3 resources”, not a Card Wars-style chaining game where the other player is bored and annoyed waiting for you to stop showing off. It’s strategy, not a gimmick. Despite the depth, the rounds are reasonably self-contained and you don’t have to plan six rounds in advance. Although it could definitely be clearer what cards people are playing and what they’re doing.

There is a winner, but it doesn’t feel like a zero-sum (ending a fight in a draw means second Price, an entertaining wrinkle), and it is difficult to not score enough points to stay in the race. Comebacks are certainly possible and the AI ​​is surprisingly good at squeezing out those victory points towards the end when the drama cards show up. I never felt cheated. It is, in a word, a hugely impressive adaptation and I can say that without even having played the board game. But as an adaptation of the book? It’s… it’s not really Dune.

It represents the political competition of Dune, interpreted as lives and fortunes handed out as tokens in a cold, Mentat-calculated game. Each individual has so little personality that you can’t even pick your favorite, but draw from a crowd that includes the darkest of characters. There’s barely any sense of relationships, except when you develop your own grudges. Somehow that’s less important than in Spice Wars, where the killing is visibly depicted and you’re presented with beautiful character models based on equally great actors, but they offer trade deals that might as well be random. Spice Wars offers more color, but both expect you to paint your own picture.

And yet I think both games are successful adaptations. Paradoxically, by throwing as much as possible overboard. Imperium interprets the power struggle exclusively as a series of calculated actions to outdo rivals in a fight for a prize, and Spice Wars interprets these factions as competing military powers in open war.

Dune is about intrigue, strong characterization, ecology, interesting themes, fantasy-inducing concepts and locations, weird sexism and homophobia, getting hornier and more bizarre as time goes on, and a guy who can manipulate time if he eats enough hamburgers. You can’t ask much more from a book, but you can’t put all that into a coherent game and still present a viable strategic challenge.

Foresight is also barely present in either. When Paul was introduced in Spice Wars, he was emphatically his young, alien self who hadn’t yet unleashed the true power of being a twink. I wouldn’t mind if he never showed up, because if you include Paul, the game becomes about how OP he is. Half of the first book is the galaxy’s most powerful institutions setting it up for his exploitation (which was partially upended by Kynes Senior stumbling in and being the first to exploit them). His unstoppable connection with the Fremen defines the story. Without him, it’s not a proper Dune, but with him, it’s a foregone conclusion. This world was created to tell a story, not to play in. Dulling him down and making the whole world a whole gives you expensive, exhausting chaos ruled by chance and error. We’re already living there.

Maybe an RPG, sure. Maybe a spice-smuggling game, but even that would be bribery and quietly maintaining business as usual. As a strategy setting, Dune 1992 is as freeform as it gets, and still revolves entirely around Paul’s campaign. Anything else would require cutting out core elements, as is the case with every other Dune game. It would be interpretations, fun exercises, spin-offs that make no sense if you consider the setting sacred – an open war on Arrakis would be so disastrous that everyone would rather surrender than risk it, which Spice Wars plays well, and if some random chance wins control of the planet like in Imperium, it would render the entire philosophical basis of the game irrelevant.

Dunc-the-film works because it knows its limitations. It’s a smart adaptation that makes creative choices I wouldn’t make, like turning best boy Hawat into practically a cameo because he overlaps so heavily with other, more movie-friendly characters. I can see what he’s doing and respect it. Spice Wars and Imperium are even more limited because they intentionally only adapt one piece of the pie.

Because Dune is simply not customizable. It would never work as a strategy game.